"29% Are Conservative on Fiscal and Social Issues, 10% Liberal on Both."

Rasmussen.

"We are living through a tremendous bust."

"It isn’t simply a housing bust. It’s a fizzling of the great consumer bubble that was decades in the making."

At the Succulent Café...

... we're ready for your juiciest comments.

"'I love business,' says the artist, who’s interested in evoking money and the market in his art..."

The artist, Takashi Murakami...

...is baffled by what his art costs today. He says he discussed prices with dealer Larry Gagosian before the show, and hearing the figures, told Gagosian that they were “a little bit expensive.” According to Murakami, Gagosian replied, “No, this is big, this is big!”

At last month’s Art Basel contemporary fair, Murakami says, an art adviser told him that prices were now substantially higher than before the September 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. It’s “bigger and bigger,” says Murakami. “Very scary.”

Does he think he’s too expensive? “I think so, yes, honestly, yes,” Murakami says. At the same time, his expenses are high: He employs about 200 people, and has costly travel and communications bills.

Surprisingly, the artist says he lives in a small apartment. “I cannot buy my home yet,” he says. His salary is “a small amount of money.”

The way he describes it, Murakami’s lifestyle is far from luxurious: He spends his days in the studio, painting and sculpting creatures like the blonde hovering over him.

Let's take a closer look at that blonde. Here's video of Murakami talking about the sexuality and the business of his art. 

The Effigies of Madison, Wisconsin — 1906 version.

An emailer writes:

I just finished John J. Miller’s “The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football” which describes how intercollegiate football almost became banned 100 years ago. Reading in your blog about the double standard regarding effigies in the latest Madison demonstrations, I thought you might enjoy this excerpt from Miller’s book (p. 211). The year was 1906.

“At the University of Wisconsin, frontier historian Frederick Jackson Turner railed against football, calling for its prohibition or at least its suspension, and tried to mobilize administrators and professors against it. On the night of March 27, when a rumor hit campus that football would be banned, hundreds of students took to the streets, chanting “Death to the faculty!” They surrounded Turner’s home. The professor faced them on his porch. “When can we have football?” shouted a student. “When you can have a clean game,” he yelled back. Turner tried to engage the young men, but they replied with catcalls. Later in the evening, they built a bonfire. The fire department showed up as the mob tried to burn three professors in effigy. The firefighters managed to save the last one. It was labeled 'Prof. Turner.'”

Fascinating! Pro-football protests! These effigies were burned, not hung. We've been debating about whether the Prosser effigy was actually hung, since it is sitting down. Obviously, there are many ways to torment an effigy. There is hanging. Burning. And, as commenter EDH said:

The garrote, a specific form of execution, is often performed seated.

The garrote, unlike a proper hanging, kills by suffocation, so it is, in fact, much closer to the choking accusation leveled by Justice Prosser's character assassins.

But enough about effigies. Let's go back to the history of football. Here's Nick Gillespie of Reason Magazine interviewing John J. Miller about "The Big Scrum." A very substantive interview with crisp, quick speaking, so... worth clicking.

"I test limits by publishing controversial material and paying people who are willing to step forward and expose political hypocrisy."

Larry Flynt says in a WaPo op-ed:

Murdoch’s minions, on the other hand, pushed limits by allegedly engaging in unethical or criminal activity: phone hacking, bribery, coercing criminal behavior and betraying the trust of their readership. If News Corp.’s reported wrongdoings are true, what Murdoch’s company has been up to does not just brush against boundaries — it blows right past them.

One cannot live off the liberty and benefits of a free press while ignoring the privacy of the people.

"This is a story about the law school market, a singular creature of American capitalism, one that is so durable it seems utterly impervious to change."

A big NYT article, in the Business section, by David Segal:

There are many reasons for this ever-climbing [tuition], but the most bizarre comes courtesy of the highly influential US News rankings. Part of the US News algorithm is a figure called expenditures per student, which is essentially the sum that a school spends on teacher salaries, libraries and other education expenses, divided by the number of students.

Though it accounts for just 9.75 percent of the algorithm, it gives law schools a strong incentive to keep prices high. Forget about looking for cost efficiencies. The more that law schools charge their students, and the more they spend to educate them, the better they fare in the US News rankings.

“I once joked with my dean that there is a certain amount of money that we could drag into the middle of the school’s quadrangle and burn,” said John F. Duffy, a George Washington School of Law professor, “and when the flames died down, we’d be a Top 10 school. As long as the point of the bonfire was to teach our students. Perhaps what we could teach them is the idiocy in the US News rankings.”

Much more at the link (with a big focus on New York Law School (which is not to be confused with New York University School of Law).

The product is a law school diploma. It's not hard to supply. But why all the demand... at such a high price? There's something quite insane about it, and U.S. News creates appearance of an orderly market in which potential buyers can see the value of the thing they will buy at such a high price. Those who bitch about U.S. News are in denial about the service it provides us, creating that appearance. [And by "us," I mean law professors.]

"Time Is on My Side," "Piece of My Heart," "Cry Baby"...

... songs written by Jerry Ragovoy, whom I'd never heard of until I read his obituary just now. He died at the age of 80. His music career goes back to 1953 and doo-wop groups. He used pseudonyms. For example, on the "Cry Baby" record label, he's "Norman Meade."

And here's a great old recording that Meade and I remember fondly — "Wonderful Dream":



You can see on the label that Ragovoy produced and arranged it, but — I see in the obituary — he was also the songwriter "R. Margolies." That's from 1962.

His connection to Janis Joplin is fascinating:

Joplin recorded “Try (Just a Little Harder),” a collaboration between Mr. Ragovoy and Chip Taylor, on her first solo album, “I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!” Her last album, “Pearl,” included three Ragovoy songs: “My Baby,” “Get It While You Can” and “Cry Baby.” But she died, in October 1970, before she could record a song that Mr. Ragovoy, with Jenny Dean, wrote specifically for her, “I’m Gonna Rock My Way to Heaven.”

Did anyone ever record "I’m Gonna Rock My Way to Heaven"? I can't find that title in YouTube or iTunes. Searching the web, all I can see is that it was sung as the finale in a small-time show called "One Night with Janis Joplin" that played in Portland last spring and got terrible reviews ("one big hot mess").

"What in the world is a beer-drinking, chest-hair-sporting Abby Wambach fan supposed to wear?"

The Wall Street Journal looks at the shirt-buying issues of male fans of women's soccer.

Until now, looking like the players was not such a problem for guys. The women's uniforms, with their formless, masculine cuts, were essentially "sized-down versions of men's jerseys," according to Nike. This year, the team's sleek cap-sleeve jerseys zip up the front, hug the bust, taper in at the waist and jut out at the hips, drawing comparisons on soccer forums to Halloween's ubiquitous "sexy nurse" costumes...

Brian Bober, an executive director at Morgan Stanley from Pelham, N.Y., who coaches his eight-year-old daughter's soccer team, says the situation has left him frustrated. "I've been trying to think of a way I could buy a jersey or something without looking like Freddie Mercury," says Mr. Bober, referring to the late lead singer of British rock band Queen, who wore a lot of tight clothing. "I generally dress with complete disregard of what people will think of me, but based on what's available I would get ridiculed right out of my town."

Bober doesn't sound like the kind of guy who should be experimenting with wearing women's clothes. By contrast: Alexi Lalas. La la la.

Nike denies the charge that they deliberately made the uniforms sexy. Their spokeman says they made "the lightest, most comfortable" jersey cut to "provide the greatest range of motion." Range of motion? All right then: Let's see the cap sleeves on the guys' clothes.

By the way, I think team sports uniforms should be figure flattering to the players. These are spectator sports. The point is to watch impressive human bodies. We want to see what we're looking at. It should look great. Not like pajamas. Not like you're a kid wearing your older sibling's playclothes.

Married in 2004, they renewed their vows in 2008 and in 2010, and now they're getting divorced.

What's really going on behind the scenes with couples who renew their vows?

The couple described in the post title consists of the most beautiful woman in the world (according to People magazine) and a man who isn't even average-looking but was previously married to a Miss Universe. That man had a whole big number on the finale of "American Idol" this year which he only had because he is married to the woman he is now divorcing.

"Taking a page from President Obama’s political playbook, Michele Bachmann has..."

"... formally left a church in Minnesota accused of holding anti-Catholic views."

... The matter has been tailing Bachmann for much of her political career. She was asked about the church’s statement in 2006, when she was running for Congress.

“It's abhorrent, it's religious bigotry,” Bachmann said then. “I love Catholics, I'm a Christian, and my church does not believe that the pope is the antichrist, that's absolutely false.”

"AFL-CIO RUNNING misleading push-calls in Wisconsin Republican primary?"

"'MediaTrackers further notes that while allegations of misleading robocalls by a pro-life group received widespread mainstream media coverage, the same was not true for the misleading pro-Wirch calls.'"

"On Friday, 'Midnight in Paris' will become the top-grossing movie of Woody Allen's long career."

It's "on track to dethrone 'Hannah and Her Sisters' as the biggest grossing movie in Allen's directorial career, which has lasted for 35 years and 41 films."

We saw that movie tonight. A fine romantic comedy. And I'm saying "fine" because Ernest Hemingway was always calling things "fine," especially in this movie.



A fine trailer that does a fine job of avoiding spoilers.

"4 Reasons Artists Are Loving Google+."

A list by Rebecca J. Rosen (of The Atlantic):

1. Google+'s image display page looks really classy.... [Example.]

2. The traffic has been immense...

3. One reason for the increased traffic: Unlike Facebook, it's the norm on Google+ to follow people who are complete strangers....

4. Twitter, like Google+, is good for interacting with strangers. But Twitter's not a great way to display art...

And David Pogue (of the NYT) explains Google+ improves on Facebook.

At the True Lily Café...

... let us not talk falsely now.

Obama tips his hand: "But we're running out of time.... We have enough time to do a big deal."

When Obama said that at today's press conference, I thought: I get it now. They're running out the clock. There's still "enough time to do a big deal." Later, they will do a small deal.

I get email.

"It’s amazing how petty Obama’s critics are. Go fuck yourself cunt."

The Seated Lynching Effigies of Madison, Wisconsin.

A couple days ago, we were talking about the way no one at the anti-Justice Prosser rally "seemed to be bothered by the symbolism of a large balloon representing Justice Prosser hanging in effigy with its neck tied to a lamppost." I linked to this comments thread — featuring our own Meade — over at the Isthmus.

Let's revisit that thread, where you can see that a man named Kenneth Burns is making a big deal out the fact that the Prosser dummy is in the seated position:

Ladies and gentlemen, the world's first seated hanging.

That brought in David Blaska (who is a regular blogger at the Isthmus):

Actually, not. Mary Suratt was given a chair to sit on and an umbrella held over her head before the trap was sprung and she was sent to eternity along with the male co-conspirators in Lincoln's assassination. A touching example of chivalry in a gentler age. But then, she and her co-conspirators did have a trial and were found guilty.

(Fascinating!) Burns returned:

I stand corrected! Nevertheless, seems to me a baseline requirement for a hanging in effigy is that it ought to look like a hanging, as opposed to a guy sitting and leaning against a post.

Hey! Fellow Madisonians! Is your memory so short that you don't remember the Great Spiderman Lynching Controversy of 1 month ago?

The sight of a life-size Spider-Man doll [known as Venom] hanged by its neck from a balcony of a Langdon Street home near the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus is prompting a stern response from school officials.

Students who live on Langdon Street said the doll that some believe represented a black man had been hanging for two or three days last week before it was taken down. But many said it never should have been put there at all.

You can see in the picture that the doll was seated.

"I see the visualization of imagery that looks powerfully, iconically of the imagery of a lynching," [said Damon Williams, vice provost for diversity]... "It's an incredibly serious and egregious thing that we do condemn at the highest levels, and we don't trivialize it"....

So does the seated position of an effigy eliminate the lynching symbolism? Apparently not! Let's get on the same page about what we can do with our giant blow-up dolls in public.

(Thanks to Chuck66 for connecting the Proszilla with the Venom.)

AND: Let's remember this lovely sign from a few months ago, originally featured in this post on February 16th:



ADDED: Here's video [NOW: a photo] of the Prosser effigy ("Proszilla") getting blown up and tied to the lamppost:


Also, based on discussion and links in the comments, I don't think Mary Suratt was sitting on the chair as the noose was tied around her neck and the trap door sprung. She seems to have been seated before she was called upon to rise and accept her grisly fate.

There's a $55 million budget shortfall in Milwaukee, so let's build that $64.4 million streetcar.

2 absurdly discordant stories on the front page of today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

1. "Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele said Friday the county faces a 2012 shortfall of about $55 million and renewed blunt warnings about the inevitability of service cuts."

"There is no way we can avoid major cuts to balance the budget - and balance the budget is what we are going to do," Abele said during a public briefing on county departmental budget requests for 2012.

2. "Milwaukee streetcar plan on track for passage."

Milwaukee Common Council leaders Thursday endorsed building a $64.6 million modern streetcar line downtown, a move that brings the city closer than ever before to resolving a public transit debate that has raged for nearly 20 years.

With Thursday's vote, a majority of aldermen have now declared their support for building the 2.1-mile line pushed by Mayor Tom Barrett...

The council's Steering & Rules Committee acted despite warnings by city Comptroller W. Martin "Wally" Morics, who urged aldermen to slow down the process, and despite two utilities' fears that the planned route would add tens of millions of dollars in costs and delay the project....

Mayor Tom Barrett is the Democrat who ran for Governor last year and lost to Scott Walker. One of his big issues was the high-speed rail line. That was the issue that made me vote for Scott Walker. Chris Abele, as the Milwaukee County Executive, occupies the position Walker vacated when he became Governor.

From the streetcar article: "Modern streetcars resemble light rail vehicles. But, like old-fashioned streetcars, they typically run on rails laid in streets, draw power from overhead wires and operate in traffic." So... don't just worry about the money. Worry about the accidents.

Krauthammer is irked that Obama's "Olympian above-the-fray no-politics-here pose is succeeding."

Well, yes:

A pliant press swallows the White House story line: the great compromiser (“clearly exasperated,” sympathized a Post news story) being stymied by Republican “intransigence” (the noun actually used in another front-page Post news story to describe the Republican position on taxes).

It's one of the cards in his hand as he dares you to call his bluff.